


Miss California

by Anonymous



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-06-30
Updated: 2002-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-30 14:03:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15098141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: CJ falls and Leo's there to help her start out fresh.





	Miss California

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

**Miss California**

**by:** Loz 

**Disclaimer:** Kudos to Dante Thomas for the Miss California lyrics and Shawn Mullins for Lyllabye. Thanks to Aaron for the brilliant characters, I'll have them home for dinner. 

**Category:** Romance. CJ/Leo

**Spoilers:** May be some B4A spoilers, alternative way that CJ came to join the campaign. 

**Rating:** YTEEN

**Author's Note:**

I can't turn around without tripping over an actor," Secretary of Labor Leo McGarry mutters to himself, the bartender pouring his fifth mineral water.

Sliding the glass off his coaster he almost runs headlong into Kevin Costner whose movies he considers worse than his alcohol addiction. A week clean and here he is rubbing shoulders with some of the Mr-Money-Bags of the Los Angeles area, with an unlimited bar-tab, not one person in the room is dry right now...except him.

Leo hates this, except the money that boosts the war chest that is, he hates actors in politics, a disliking that had manifested itself from the Reagan administration of the 80's. He doesn't mind them buying their way in, he just hates going into bat against amateurs.

But there's one thing he admires and they're all good at it...'Fake it until you can make it.'

__

> ~*~  
>  She's Miss California, hottest thing in west L.A.  
>  House down by the water, sails her yacht across the bay  
>  Drives a Marinello, Hollywood's her favorite scene  
>  Loves to be surrounded with superstars that know her name.  
>  ~*~

CJ Cregg places the empty champagne glass on the silver tray picking up another to replace it, her eyes scan the guests that fill the room...there is precious few people she doesn't know, or hasn't been with.

"CJ!" The deep male voice calls, one that she'd recognize anywhere.

"Russell." She purrs wrapping a free arm around her gladiator.

"How about you be my date to the Golden Globes this year." The Australian - New Zealand combination accent is irresistible, especially after eight glasses of champagne.

"I won't be there." Disappointment purposely placed in her voice. "But I'll see you at the after parties." She says slyly, clicking glasses with him and releasing her grip.

"Well... if it isn't L.A.'s number one party girl." The distinctive voice turns her around.

"I could never match you." CJ accepts the fresh glass of wine from Harrison Ford.

"Why is it you're not doing my publicity again?"

"You can't afford me." CJ teases heading out towards the pool.

~*~

C J Cregg, Hollywood's publicist to the stars and she's in her element. From the boat she bought last week moored below an undisclosed million dollar house to the just off the production line fast car in the garage.

She's surrounded by the people she represents and their peers. Her name is on the tip of everyone's tongue, the best representation in town comes out of her office and right now she's hit her fifteen minutes of fame. A crest she plans to ride for as long as she can in a town where careers can rise and fall in the same week. 

It's another party for someone, hosted by a name at a location she won't remember in the morning. Potential clients continue to knock at her door as her bank balance knocks up another couple of zeros and as long as she's here, promoting herself and her clients, she doesn't care for petty details and she'll do it all over again, three nights a week, every week.

'More men than you've had hot dinners' her mothers voice reverberates around her head as she feels George Clooney's wandering eyes on her from across the room. Her stomach rolls, CJ knows what it means, she puts the glass under a plastic plant somewhere and makes her way discreetly to the bathroom.

It's occupied with another man waiting outside, his face looks familiar but she can't place it, nor does she have the concentration to try and remember. Her stomach is a ticking volcanic time bomb, ready to spew forth an undetermined amount of alcohol.

She pushes past the man in front of her as the bathroom becomes free, not caring to lock the door as the French champagne hits the toilet bowel.

"Hey are you Ok?" He moves in holding back her hair and rubbing her back as she gets a second viewing of the food that had been passed around the room earlier.

"I'm fine." CJ raises her head slowly as the stranger flushes away the first half of her evening.

"You should go home." He tells her when she stands again, checking her look in the mirror.

"Why?" She looks at him confused as to why he would say this.

"You've had too much to drink." He says with slight disbelief that she had to ask.

"I've got room for more now." CJ holds his gaze before leaving him the bathroom.

*

Two thirty and no one seems to be showing signs of slowing down, then he assumes they don't have to be on a plane back to Washington tomorrow. Too many mineral waters have left him with the desire to pee again, his only farewell needs be the governor of California who he tells himself can't be that hard to find in a crowd of drunk overpaid actors. He'll be the one telling the biggest lies.

Out by the pool the red head who jumped the toilet queue is slumped over some outdoor furniture a half empty glass is slipping from her hand and Leo guess she wasn't able to accommodate quite as much after throwing up as she had originally anticipated. He crouches down, feeling for a pulse which beats confidently back to him.

"CJ's crashed early tonight." Leo looks up matching the voice to John Travolta.

"She does this often?" Leo says looking over her with concern.

"Three parties a week or anytime she doesn't go home with anyone." Leo thinks he hears amusement in Travolta's voice.

"She just stays here?" Leo places the glass on the ground.

"Her people will come find her, put her in a limo and take her home." The actor shrugs. "It's not that uncommon, we all used to be young once."

"She'll need a new liver in a few years at this rate...can you help me" He puts an arm around his shoulder.

>   
>  __
> 
> ~*~  
>  She's a rich girl from the top of the food chain  
>  Love and material things, kinda lonely  
>  Till I meet her at the Grammy's 10 mill on a diamond ring.  
>  ~*~

Her chauffeur helps Leo get CJ into the car and inside the house, it's a job he seems to be well accustomed to. Only now does he find out she's in PR and he wonders how she'd feel if she recognized what sort of message she was sending out, slumped over some outdoor furniture passed out.

As he walks her, barely conscious through the house which is big enough for his extended family, he goes into six rooms before he finds a bedroom. He tucks her into the Victorian four post bed, the antiques which crowd the room don't go unnoticed, nor the suggestion that the rest of the darkened rooms are the same.

He counts twenty rooms on his way back to the kitchen, without indication anyone else lives here and determines that despite most likely having two of everything, she leads a very lonely existence.

He makes her drink two glasses of water when he finds his way back to her along the maze of corridors and leaves the rest for her on the bedside. Downstairs he cancels his flight out tomorrow and lies down on the couch.

Unsure as he is as to why he's decided to stay, uninvited, he knows only that some part of him has kicked in, a fatherly protective vibe...or maybe it's just that she reminds him of himself...not a month earlier.

*

The morning sun warms his eyelids, rousing him from sleep. His neck awakens to the punishing pain from having slept awkwardly on it, penalty for hours in a difficult position but all is forgotten as he realizes she's standing over him, it's the question of for how long that scares him.

"It must have been bad if you came out here." She mutters more to herself than anything.

"I'm sorry?" Leo replies, it's to early for cryptic crosswords.

"Last night, you didn't even stay in the same bed as me after we'd finished." Her blue eyes flicker and she talks with the certainty of someone who was sober the entire evening.

"We didn't..." Leo breaks it gently, confusion still reigning supreme, dominating her expression. "You pushed in front of me at the toilet and later I found you passed out by the pool, your chauffer helped me get you home and up into the bed." Again it's left to his imagination to conceive just what sort of life she leads...he doubts his assumptions would be too far from the truth.

"I don't remember." She laughs as if he were an old high school boyfriend and Leo bites his tongue from saying he isn't surprised. "I get...sometimes and I wake up in the morning and..." Her inability to say the words 'drunk' and 'I've bought home a stranger for a one night stand' remind him of himself.

He nods indicating understanding and effectively letting her off the hook.

"Breakfast?" She offers.

*

"I'm CJ Cregg." She smiles warmly putting toast into cook, remembering despite everything she hasn't introduced herself formerly.

"Leo McGarry" He watches her move around the metallic kitchen, searching for things like she was a chef in a new job. It's his guess she can't boil water.

"At the risk of sounding incredibly rude, I know you from somewhere don't I?" Her voice is muffled from inside a low cupboard.

"I'm the Secretary of Labor." He says over the Los Angeles Times which was on the kitchen counter, whoever left it probably wasn't employed to cook.

"Washington...what were you doing at the party last night?" She asks like she expected a politician to be at home darning socks on a Friday night.

"Topping up the campaign chest." He sighs coming across a photo of the Governor on the social page and getting a first whiff of the burning toast.

The charcoaled toast pops up and she sighs dejectedly, putting down the unearthed pan with a clatter, Leo is already hedging his bets he won't get a cup of coffee out of her successfully this morning.

"I'll order us something." Determined she picks up the phone.

*

"So you're in PR." Leo takes a bite into the fresh bagel, he's on a discovery mission to see just how correct his assumptions about her were.

"Cregg and associates publicity." She affirms, breaking open a bottle of spring water.

"You live here alone?" He says looking around.

"Pretty much." She sighs. "I spend most of my time at the office though."

"No time to enjoy the fruits of your labor." He adds staring at an abstract sculpture settled out across the garden.

"It's all fairly unfulfilling." She breathes, getting up to take her plate to the kitchen and he thinks she hears him say 'so are the men' as she makes it to the brink of the room. It strikes him the comment might be for his benefit, animosity he spent last night on her couch not in the bed or just feeling seedy from a big night out because the woman who appeared to be in her element last night, isn't the same one who's effectively just commented that money can't buy happiness. 

*

"You probably have somewhere else you need to be." She says shyly as he puts his plate in the sink with hers.

"I actually cancelled my flight which was for this morning." He shrugs, not sure where he stands or where his chauffer is.

"Oh jeez I'm sorry." Honesty seeps from her as if she knows what it's like to be inconvenienced. "I know what it's like to be dicked around by people." The confirmation comes.

"In your game I bet you do." Her apologetic smile wipes away any disappointment he had about missing spending another Saturday at the office, which was minimal in the first place.

"I know this may be strange...though not as strange as you've probably experienced in the last twenty four hours." A slight blush creeps up her face. "Would you like to spend the day with me...here?"

__

> ~*~  
>  She invites me to spend a day on the jet skies  
>  At first it didn't mean a thing  
>  Then she told me I was the one she searched for  
>  And it was hard to believe  
>  ~*~

"I don't know much about Washington politics." She admits as they walk along the boundary of her land towards the jetty. "I know you must be important though."

He nods. "I know precious little about the mechanics of Hollywood."

"You really are just a legend in your own lunchbox." She talks generally, a graceful laugh escaping past her lips.

"You go out on the water much?" He nods towards the imposing yacht moored a little way off shore.

"It's my escape." She nods, lips pursed together.

"Do you want to...?" Her voice fades like it's an inappropriate question to ask of a man in his position.

"Just don't let me fall in Ok."

*

"I have another gathering to go to tonight." She tells him, revigorated by fresh salt air and the freedom of the expansive blue Pacific, despite only going a short way off shore, they head back to the house.

"Gathering, is that what you call it out here?" A grin spreads across his face.

"It's only one hundred people so..." As opposed to the five hundred last night he guesses. "You could come." She plucks from mid-air.

"Not two nights in a row." He laughs.

"You probably have to get back to the East Coast anyway." She reminds herself.

The pile of work on his desk will still be there Monday. "Not particularly."

"So come." Her eyes light up and he can see himself in a repeat of last night.

"Don't go, have a night in." He suggests and her reaction tells him it's been a long time since anyone's suggested anything remotely similar to that.

*

"Bond, James Bond." She says seriously as Sean Connery slides into frame. Leo leans back into the couch wondering how many times the pajamas she has on have been worn, they're strangely stiff, he can picture her pulling them straight from the plastic and putting them on forgetting to cut the tag.

"You ever represent anyone in this film?" 

"I was in the business of dirty nappies when this film was made." She smiles turning to look at him before getting up.

She's gripping a bottle of rum for dear life by the neck when she comes back with two glasses in the other hand.

"What are you doing?" His attention diverted from the secret agents heroics.

"You want a glass?" She asks pouring one anyway.

"No!" It comes out a little to forcefully, surprise crossing her face.

"You're not an alcoholic are you?" She teases and he wants to say yes and so are you.

"I drank my bodyweight last night, I'll give my liver a rest tonight." He covers, watching her down two glasses before he takes it out of the room and bringing back chips and cola.

By the time the movie is over she's asleep on his shoulder and he's managed to keep her sober. She mumbles directions to a guest bed room as he helps her to bed again, drowsy as if under an anesthesia. He'd help her to bed any night in this state over last nights and as he pulls the covers up to her chin she mumbles in a sleep induced whisper. "This is the first time I've shared all this with anyone."

He goes to bed guessing it's not often she shares the possessions in her life with anyone.

The guestroom is the bed he laid her in last night.

*

"What do you mean 'you thought' " CJ grins looking in the rear view mirror at the driver behind her, suitably impressed by her wheels.

"You know." He shrugs watching the cross traffic move with their green light.

"You thought only men could appreciate a fast car." She revs the engine for good measure.

"I never said that." But his words are left, like dust behind him as she takes off with the green light.

*

"You have to fly back tonight?" She watches the Malibu waves wash away the footprints of the people walking ahead of them.

"I have a dinner with friends tomorrow night." He remembers Jed Bartlet's birthday dinner.

"Friends." She says the word like it's foreign to her, it's meaning not understood to her.

"You have any of those CJ?" He teases lightly.

"I don't have friends I have clients." She states and he falls silent.

"I'm sure that's a mutually beneficial relationship." He says careful not to use sarcasm.

"All my roads are one way, in their direction." She says slightly resentful.

"What about family?" He adds, feeling sorry for her, for the first time.

"I don't talk to them very much."

Unsure of how to respond to the woman, who to the unknowing eye has everything, really has nothing...not even a basic human relationship.

"I really enjoyed yesterday and today." She stops facing him. "If I was looking for someone, it'd be someone like you." He wonders how they could possibly compliment each other, finding a union between them difficult to  comprehend with her as black as night and him as bright as day. "You're a breath of fresh air, much nicer than the other men I've been with." And he could swear she's on the verge of tears.

"I'm a politician I'm just a better liar." He jokes, but his attempt to lighten the situation seems to fail as tears come closer to reality. She runs back up the beach before they are made evident to him.

The car ride back is silent.

*

With an hour before his ride arrives he finds her in the swinging chair that hangs from the old oak facing the water. They hadn't spoken since the beach and as Leo went about finding his car, CJ had disappeared.

"I have to go soon." He sits next to her following her trance, fixed on the open blue expanse.

"Last night when you asked me if I was an alcoholic I lied to you, I am." Her eyes widen fixing on him and he could swear someone dipped in the same pot of paint to produce the ocean and her eyes.

"I'm so sorry." Her head hangs, again not willing to meet his eyes, ashamed at her lack of tact.

"There's something you can do to make it up...I want you to check into a clinic, I know a great one in Arizona, thirty days and when you come back you do AA."

A sad smile creeps across her face as she looks up to him again. "How much of your actions do you see in me?"

"Everything."

"I can't just leave, disappear for thirty days." She steps out of the chair.

"Say your grandmother died, you're taking a holiday to Europe..." His voice dissipates watching her pace in front of him.

"What if someone finds out."

"It's all confidential." he soothes.

"I can't." She shakes her head. " I have clients, people who rely on me."

"They can't rely on you when you're face down at party and it's only down hill from here...I know." The last words get choked in his throat.

She looks at him realizing for the first time he understands and maybe he knows a little of what it's like to be her everyday, even if it's just a little bit of her.

"If you won't do it for you, do it for me."

"Maybe they can cure me of my serial one night stands." She jokes, a defense mechanism to admitting the truth to herself.

"You need to bring your parents back into your life, ring up the friends you've lost contact with and stop kissing a whole lot of idiots to get to the real thing...be a little selective." He smiles adopting a fatherly tone and her bright smile breaks through.

"Ok." It's so quiet he almost misses it.

"I have to go." He stumbles out of the moving chair. "If you need anything, even just someone to talk to." He puts his card in her hand gripping it tightly and brushing his lips gently across her cheek.

"What does CJ stand for?" His eyes narrow in question, not letting her hand out of his grip.

"Claudia Jean, it was a compromise between my mother and father." A blush warms across her face.

"Good luck Claudia Jean." He squeezes her hand one last time before walking across the lawn up to his car.

She fingers his card that was placed in her left hand and when the car has moved out of her sight she goes inside to pack and make phone calls.

...He never looked back and it's not her intention either.

>   
>  __
> 
> ~*~  
>  She's Miss California, hottest thing in west L.A.  
>  House down by the water, sails her yacht across the bay  
>  Drives a Marinello, Hollywood's her favorite scene  
>  Loves to be surrounded with superstars who know her name.  
>  ~*~

"The princess fell from her pedestal." An attractive red head laughs behind the morning paper over breakfast with her father.

"What?" Leo McGarry comes back from a daydream when his only daughter reads the headline.

"Princess of PR falls from her pedestal." Mallory shows him the headline. "It's about that publicist to the stars, CJ Cregg." Te mere mention of her initials have Leo on full alert and he wants to reach across the table and snatch the paper from Mallory.

"Read it to me." He says over his coffee.

"It' just basically says that her company was the top publicity agency in Hollywood, but about a month ago she spent time at a rehab clinic and now nobody wants her doing their PR, something about being a drunk with loose lips, she's lost most of her clients and is involved in an expensive legal battle with the person who leaked the story and those who published it." The image of her alone in the big house can't be erased from Leo's head.

"She's had to sell her car and yacht." Mallory adds and suddenly Leo feels sick remembering the freedom rush he got out on the boat and the drive down the coast in her car, he'd never really looked at the scenery till that day.

"You should be more sympathetic." Leo puts the cup to his mouth and Mallory tilts her head asking why.

'Me' he mouths over the top of the cup and Mallory nods in somber recognition of her lack of discretion.

*

When he gets to his office he gets her number from information and spends the rest of the day contemplating calling her. Part of him feels bad because he pointed her towards rehab and now someone with the loose lips she'd been accused of having, has told the whole word and bought her life to her knees with one interview.

But then again, who knew who could be bringing her home from the next party...if she made it at all.

His hand rests on the receiver, ready to pick it up and dial, but he never does, reminding himself she has to get through it alone, it's the only way, the same way he did it...

Then he couldn't have done it without support...

He picks up the phone and speaks to the woman outside his office.

*

He went straight from the plane to her offices, fighting his way through the traffic in the rental car, circling blocks a couple of times before finding his way.

The building is dark and a realtor has slapped a for lease sign out the front, there's only fittings left in the building which was once her life.

Not dwelling, he heads to her house.

*

She's getting out of a cab in the circuit driveway as he crawls across the pebbles.

She looks the same, a little thinner perhaps, paler.

As the cab drives away she watches his unfamiliar car park off to the side and she squints a little, be it the sun or trying to figure out who is behind the wheel.

He doesn't want to get out, it didn't cross his mind as he got on the plane in Washington that she may not want to see him, in her mind he may be to blame.

Having come to far he steps out of the car behind the shield of the door and awaits a reaction.

"You heard..." Her voice raised with the distance between them.

He nods, stepping out from behind the door, pushing it closed behind him.

"I wanted to call..." Her voice chokes and Leo takes the first step towards her only to have her moments later, fling herself around him, sobbing over his shoulder.

"I didn't know if I should come." He confesses.

"You did the right thing." Sshe pulls him closer to her.

>   
>  __
> 
> ~*~  
>  In a couple of days she had me a bracelet  
>  made from Harry Winston's place  
>  went horseback up to the mountain top  
>  showin' me the land she's got  
>  ~*~

"This is all yours?" Leo strolls next to her through the ankle height grass.

"Down to the river." She points and Leo has to focus to make out the water below them.

"You gonna tell me what happened?" He looks right at her and she sinks down into the grass and begins the story.

"Do you remember those pictures that were released about three weeks ago of Graeme Garland?" He nods remembering the supermarkets being spread with photos of the actor cheating on his wife with another woman and the laughter within the secretaries about how lucky he was having not been caught till now.

"Let me guess, a client of yours."

"Big client." She emphasizes. "He wanted me to stop them being published or at least put a spin on it saying they were scenes from a new movie of his."

"Weren't you in Arizona?"

"Yes, he threatened..." The word drips with hatred. "My assistant Carol and called me, telling the staff he was my partner."

"There was nothing I could do, I told him that, I could use the movie line but what were we going to say in up to twelve months time when there's no movie...it ended up on the cutting room floor, he makes twenty million a movie, nothing of his ever ended up on the cutting room floor. It's not like I can negotiate with the magazines either, a story like that boosts circulation by a few hundred thousand copies."

Leo is sure there were more than usual littering the desks of secretaries in the department of labour that week.

"I get back after every tabloid in the country picks up the story and I'm shopping for the essentials, waiting to pay and here's my face on the front cover of two magazines with accompanying articles about my wild drunken binges and my time in rehabilitation."

"Extracting some revenge." Leo surmises.

"Exactly and before I know it in come the calls wanting to cancel contracts, my clients are leaving in droves, I'm selling off assets left right and center to pay legal costs in the deformation suit I filed and my business I built from nothing is now exactly that and the bank is knocking on my door."

"This is all my fault?" Leo says softly.

"Are you kidding." She says in disbelief. "I feel a hundred times better since I've come back from Arizona, my life has been turned upside down and shaken for the best." she breathes in deeply and smiles. "I would never have even considered it if it weren't for you."

"Of course now I have nothing left." She shrugs, appearing only slightly concerned.

"You have me." Leo smiles at her

>   
>  __
> 
> ~*~  
>  Well it's alright but something's on your mind  
>  Looking past all that shines now, the tears are running through  
>  All those things are nice, but that's not why I'm here  
>  I'll wipe away your tears, simply by loving you  
>  ~*~

"Why did you comes back?" She asks as they head towards the house.

"I thought you might need a friend, some support." Her slight 'hmmph' sound catches him off guard. "That's funny?" He questions.

"No it's just..." A tear breaks free. "You're not like other people I know, they come to me only when they want something."

"I don't care you don't have a boat or a fast car now CJ, I came because I thought you might need someone to lean on."

"I know" Said so softly Leo almost has to lip read. "Thank you." She mouths.

*

"I called my parents a couple of weeks back." His eyes light up.

"What did they say?"

"They missed me." Her face beams.

"What did you say?"

"I missed them." A cheeky grin escapes. 

Leo can't help smile to himself either.

"Oh and I rang my best friend from school."

"What happened?"

"We're going to have lunch tomorrow."

*

"When do you go back?" She stirs the spaghetti sauce and Leo wonders if there was life management classes he missed in Arizona.

"Sunday night."

"So soon." She sighs and Leo takes the opportunity to ask what he wants to ask.

"Come with me." The spoon is abandoned as she stares across the table at him.

"You're crazy." She dismisses, returning to the sauce.

"No I'm not, I have a friend, a friend I want to run for President, come and join the campaign." His excitement for the idea grows.

"I can deal with the hissy-fits of over-egoed actors, I'm not sure I could do politicians."

"On the contrary I think you can."

"You want me to just pack up and move."

"Why not, sell the house, start all over again, start fresh." She watches him, brain ticking over pros and cons behind her eyes.

"Ok." She answers like it were the easiest thing in the world.

"Ok." He grins.

"That's what I said." Ger smile grows.

*

"Try this." With the hand not holding the wooden stirring spoon she waves him to come and try the sauce.

The hand underneath the spoon to stop any wayward drips slides gently along his chin as he gently tastes the red sauce.

"More salt?" She searches for a reaction, her right hand puts the spoon back in the simmering sauce, her left remains hovering just below his chin.

"No I love it." He says simply watching her face light up again thinking he could watch it smile everyday. His hands cup her face preceding his lips which meet hers cautiously at first, noses and teeth which bump into each other go unnoticed, they don't pull back till they've got it right.

>   
>  __
> 
> ~*~  
>  She grew up with the children of the stars  
>  In the Hollywood Hills, on the Boulevard  
>  Her parents threw big parties, everyone was there  
>  They hung out with folks like Dennis Hopper, Bob Sega and Sonny and Cher  
>  ...  
>  I sing everything's gonna be alright  
>  Rockabye, rockabye  
>  Everything's gonna be alright  
>  Rockabye, rockabye, rockabye  
>  ~*~

The gaudy for sale sign stands isolated on the large front lawn as Leo pulls out of her driveway for the last time. The few things from the house which really meant anything to her fit across the back seat of the small car. He worries about her moving cross country so soon after rebuilding her relationship with her parents but they seemed more than happy for her to leave California as if it was a detrimental influence on her life.

There's no one to say goodbye to, because no one really cared for her, or got to know the person she really was, or was capable of being. Hollywood has forgotten her name, the flavor of the month they've moved onto the next scandal, bringing careers and lives to their knees with the smallest amount of printed lies.

She doesn't look back ...and neither does he.

>   
>  __
> 
> ~*~  
>  And all her friends tell her she's so pretty  
>  She'd be a whole lot prettier if she smiled once in a while  
>  Cause even her smile looks like a frown  
>  She's seen her share of devils in this angel town  
>  I sing everything's gonna be alright  
>  Rockabye, rockabye  
>  Everything's gonna be alright  
>  Rockabye, roakabye, rockabye  
>  ~*~

The gentle rock lyrics from the local radio station glide from the speakers and Leo takes his eyes off the road for a second to confirm that she is asleep.

He recalls the party where they met and figures that's what they mean by stories to tell your grandchildren.

He acknowledges how true the lyrics are of her in the first weekend he spent with her, the smile was still a frown but he didn't have to dig to deep to uncover her demons. She moves slightly against his shoulder as he turns towards LAX, and the radio gets turned down as the song peters out.

*

Leo lets his head fall back against the seat as the engines carry them along the runway, lifting them towards the East coast. Eyelids fall like CJ's next to him, concentrating his hearing on the engines which propel the plane higher.

"She's Miss California, hottest thing on the Bartlet campaign." He whispers, knowing full well the sleeping CJ won't hear him, it doesn't matter though because it's something he made up himself.

L.A. shrinks outside the planes window but with their eyes closed...neither look back.


End file.
